Mark Zuckerberg could be a hookah smoking caterpillar right now. Or a white knight talking backwards. Or Alice in Wonderland, three meters tall. But he wants to be Mark Zuckerberg, so the avatar in his virtual reality metaverse looks exactly like him, including black jeans and a black sweater. Psychologically, it may be incredibly healthy if someone simply wants to be himself with limitless possibilities; However, it takes all the magic out of what the Facebook founder and Meta boss (he renamed the company) has presented.
Zuckerberg showed how people can escape from reality in virtual reality, and that is more opium for the people than religions have ever been. If, at some point in the future, we, the meta-customers, live in 15-square-meter cubicles because of unaffordable housing prices that are in caves because of the almost uninhabitable nature of the planet due to climate change, and we only get rationed food: that would be nice, in to be able to pretend life is still a little fun in virtual reality?
Okay, sounds dystopian. But who can blame you for what Zuckerberg has presented in the 17 years on Facebook – and what ultimately came out of it?
It’s not about Facebook past and meta-future, but about virtual reality in general. It’s been the buzz topic in Silicon Valley for a few years, the next big thing because it could replace this other big thing that has shaped, determined, maybe even enslaved our lives in recent years: the screen, from computer to Laptop to phone.
The virtual world cannot replace real experiences
Anyone who has already tried virtual reality has experienced fascinating things: how to box someone in the virtual world and sweat on the couch in real life. How shameful it can be to experience VR porn (the industry is always at the forefront of technical disruptions). How terrific to pretend with a friend during quarantine as if you were sitting together on the edge of the field playing basketball. Or to appear to be sitting in the living room of an artist at a concert. Or to stand on the edge of a volcano that is just erupting.
Everything was great. But in Zuckerberg’s vision, that’s just kid stuff – just like chat rooms, nude photo websites, and radio streaming were just gimmicks that made many people think the Internet was short-lived nonsense. Anyone who follows Zuckerberg’s presentation again and ignores the fact that even under the influence of magic mushrooms, Zuckerberg cannot be imagined as anything other than, well, Mark Zuckerberg: With this so-called metaverse, which means a collective virtual space, a complete immersion. But is that really cool, especially considering what many have experienced over the past few months?
Zuckerberg’s example is a concert in LA that someone can attend from Tokyo. Sure, that’s cool – and of course people in Tokyo can buy merchandise. But anyone who has spent a few months in isolation knows how great it can be to be sweated over with beer during a show by DJ Steve Aoki – and get goose bumps because the person next to you touches your own forearm and indicates, possibly interested in a kiss. Or seeing a real person in a bar with real wrinkles, rolls of fat and imperfect teeth – and not the filtered version. Or how exciting it is to stand on a real mountain and be scared.
As great as escapism can be: You return to life when you put down the sensors, and anyone who claims that young people in particular spend more time in the digital world should sit their child on the edge of the field playing ice hockey or take them to a cliff Drive sea.
Virtual reality is going to be a big deal – if only because Silicon Valley visionaries say it and we are conditioned to swallow everything they put in front of us. The only salvation could be that, as some conspiracy theorists claim, we have long been living in a simulation. But Zuckerberg doesn’t know anything about it, shhh, either – we’ll only find out shortly before Christmas; then the new Matrix film appears. In real movie theaters, where the person behind you throws popcorn, the couple smooches in front of you and they talk all the time. Wonderful, this reality.